World War I

World War I, or the First World War often abbreviated as WWI or WW1, was a global war that lasted from 1914 - 1918, was the so called first great war catastrophe of the 20th century, with approximately 20 millions of deaths, only surpassed of Hitlers following World War II with approx. 70 millions of deaths.

The superficial cause of this war was the assassination of Austrias prince Franz Ferdiannd in Sarajevo (in the austrian occupied state of Bosnia, of course!) by a Serbian partisan organisation by the end of june 1914.

The true causes of the war lied deeper: World wide Imperialism of the great European powers with a big arms race among each other. The German Kaiser Wilhelm II. was even willing to equal the so far dominance of the Royal Navy on the seas of the world.

The war began with the attack of the austrian-hungarian army against the inferior forces of Serbia. This lead to the mobilization of the Russian army, tsar Nicolas II. was ready to help his Serbian ally. But he noted to Kaiser Wilhelm that he wouldn't intervene as long as diplomatic negotiations, which were mainly pushed by the London government, were going on.

Nevertheless, Germany urged Nicolas to pull back his mobilisation - otherwise the Reich would mobilize too.

Since the tsar couldn't demobilize without the risk that Vienna would occupie - after Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia - the state of Serbia too, Berlin declared war to Russia and declared mobilization of its troops too. France, the Entente-ally of Britain and Russia, declared mobilization of its troops the same day as Germany, but ordered its troops in a defensive manner to stay 10 kilometers away from the German borders.

The local war Austria-Serbia became the caracter of a world war at the moment on august 4th 1914, when the German Reich troops attacked illegally the neutral state of Belgium to bring the war - according to the Schlieffenplan - to its real destination, France. As a consequence of these events, London declared the war to Berlin.

German empire war flag

British soldiers in combat

In the following months and years of bloody fightings, the war became stagnant in France as at the "Ostfront"; none of the parties could overcome the others. Then, in 1917, Lenins socialist revolution took Russia out of the war. But approximately at the same time, US-president Woodrow Wilson, who deeply condemned the "German militarism", decided to enter the war agaist the Reich and Austria. The fresh US-troops brought at last the necessary superiority for the Entente - in september 1918, the Reich demanded a ceasefire.